The campaign against Jejomar Binay is in full swing. Alan Peter Cayetano and his cohorts are keeping themselves busy in trying to destroy as much of the VP's reputation as they can before the campaign season even comes close to starting.
This early in the game, there's already evidence of campaigning (from the Binay camp) and black propaganda (from everybody else).
I know enough about the Binays, thanks to a very good source, to know that most of the charges being piled on them isn't hogwash. But you know who are? The senators pursuing these cases.
I don't know enough about Koko Pimentel to accurately judge his point in all this; he's virtually an unknown. And Antonio Trillanes can be summed up as a power-hungry, backstabbing tool. I don't know why people even take him seriously.
But I do know enough about Alan Peter Cayetano and his family to say that pursuing this case against Binay is hypocrisy.
See, Alan Peter is the husband of Lani Cayetano, incumbent mayor of Taguig city. She's infamous for several things herself, most famous of these being part of the Makati-Navotas-Taguig quarrel for ownership of Fort Bonifacio. She believes that the Fort should stay with Taguig; to be fair, I agree with her. But this gives the Cayetano family a reason to hit against the Binays. The overpricing of buildings in Makati is just a convenient happy coincidence.
But while we're on the topic of happy coincidences, wasn't Lani accused of something similar a while back? For those of you who aren’t aware, she and her husband were accused of overpricing the purchase of eighteen multicabs for the use of the city of Taguig. The alleged purchase order amounted to around Php 9 million. The complaint against Mayor Lani and Senator Alan Peter purported that each multicab was priced at Php 498,000, saying that the actual market price of the multicab was Php 300,000 lower than this.
Then there’s the whole issue brought up by Taguig mayorial candidate Dante Tinga during the 2010 elections. According to their camp, Lani had rigged the polls to her favor, in order to win her re-election bid. The interesting bit happened when the COMELEC tried to retrieve the ballot boxes from the Taguig city hall in order to conduct a recount: Mayor Lani effectively held the ballot boxes hostage, and the commission had to bring the issue up to the Supreme Court in order to retrieve the electoral results. Here’s what happened afterwards. You be the judge as to whether the COMELEC did the right thing or not.
This may be a drop in the bucket of corruption allegations plaguing VP Jejomar and his family. But the fact is, these are still actionable complaints against not just one, but two members of the government. And there’s still the whole issue of the Hacienda Luisita problem haunting the president. So the question is, why is the senate just focusing on one person? Is Jojo Binay that much of a threat?
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